Spun off from PGT: President Elect Donald Trump thread
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Originally Posted by Makarov
You have already been provided with links to numerous studies that show that a wage gap persists even after "number of hours worked" is accounted for.
There are also other, more complex issues such as the way society values traditionally female work.
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The wage cap is almost entirely about choices couples make once they have children. Single women in Canada who have never married earn 98 per cent of what single men who have never married earn. Women in their 20s in the UK now earn more than men in their 20s.
Married men in Canada earn substantially more than single men, even when accounting for age and education. Is that about bias and oppression against single men, or about married men seeking out more hours and higher-paying work once they're married and have kids?
As for jobs 'society values', wages in Canada aren't set by societal values. They're set by the market. If roofers earn more than receptionists it's because the minimum salary you have to pay to get and keep a competent roofer is higher than the minimum salary you have to pay to get a competent receptionist (owing to the discomfort and danger of being a roofer).
The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap
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GOLDIN: I like to think about an individual who gets a degree — let’s say a law degree — and it’s a woman, and now I have an individual a man who gets a law degree. And they graduate from law school and they’re both equally brilliant, and they both get jobs in approximately the same type of firm. By and large they’re going to earn approximately the same amount when they start. Things will continue in their lives — they’ll both perhaps find partners, get married, have kids. It’s often the case that women will leave the very large law firms that put a lot of time demands on them and go to smaller firms or become corporate counsel, become part-time corporate counsel, perhaps, for a while. They will go to small firms where the workload is somewhat different. They may work in fact the same number of hours, but they may work hours that are their hours rather than the hours imposed on them by the firm. The woman will then begin to make — if she’s the one who did this — she will make considerably less than the man. And a lot of what we see — not all of it — but a lot of what we see is this choice to go into occupations that have less expensive temporal flexibility, that allow individuals to do their work on their own time.
- Freakonomics podcast
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Wage Gap Myth Exposed — By Feminists
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Women’s groups will counter that even if most of the wage gap can be explained by women’s choices, those choices are not truly free. Women who major in sociology rather than economics, or who choose family-friendly jobs over those that pay better but offer less flexibility, may be compelled by cultural stereotypes. According to the National Organization for Women (NOW), powerful sexist stereotypes “steer” women and men “toward different education, training, and career paths” and family roles. But are American women really as much in thrall to stereotypes as their feminist protectors claim? Aren’t women capable of understanding their real preferences and making decisions for themselves? NOW needs to show, not dogmatically assert, that women’s choices are not free. And it needs to explain why, by contrast, the life choices it promotes are the authentic ones — what women truly want, and what will make them happier and more fulfilled.
- Huffington Post
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The Biggest Myth About the Gender Wage Gap
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A new survey from PayScale this morning finds that the wage gap nearly evaporates when you control for occupation and experience among the most common jobs, especially among less experienced workers. It is only as careers advance, they found, that men outpaced female earnings as they made their way toward the executive suite.
- The Atlantic
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